As the hedge fund world waits for and wonders about what horrors August may bring, the general consensus is that July wasn’t so bad—for most hedge funds.

The latest bringer of not-so-bad news is the Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index, which gained 0.13% last month, easily eclipsing the Standard and Poor’s 500, which dropped more than 3%. Year-to-date, the Greenwich index is up 7.98% through July.

“While difficult to predict the full market impact associated with absorption of sub prime risks, this month’s hedge fund performance indicates the impact will likely be less significant than feared,” notes Ben Rossman, general manager of Greenwich Alternative Investments.

“Of the funds that Greenwich tracks, those with direct exposure to such risks – inaccurate pricing of CDOs and other opaque instruments, tighter credit terms, potential reform to rating agency operations and the like – are estimated to represent less than 10% of the hedge fund universe.”

Greenwich’s Investable Hedge Fund Index wasn’t as lucky as its flagship partner: It fell 0.74% on in July, and is now up 5.39% year-to-date.

From the current issue of

We are accustomed to splitting trading into technical and fundamental buckets. Both involve crunching data; one set includes market fundamentals and the other pure price data. Alternative data is a third bucket that is gaining traction.